Animal Sentience: Introduction - Includes three more pages of detailed information concerning sentience in both farm and other animals. Page OnePage TwoPage Three

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.Hippocrates

The following is an introduction to a series of articles which focus on sentience in animals.

What is sentience

Here is a definition from Wikimedia :

"Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.[1] Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as "qualia"). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and thus is held to confer certain rights."

In any endeavour to gain rights for animals is the need for recognition that animals are sentient creatures, aware of themselves, others of their kind and other species, aware of sensations in their bodies, along with the capacity to experience negative and positive emotions, both pleasure and sorrow, and the ability to experience both a state of pain and that of wellbeing, capable of suffering both physically and psychologically.

The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?’ Jeremy Bentham

It is my view that whether sentient or otherwise we have no right to interfere with the lives of animals, to exploit or abuse them in anyway. Nonetheless the cause of animal rights is enhanced if we can establish that an animal is sentient.

Because one species is more clever than another, does it give it the right to imprison or torture the less clever species? Does one exceptionally clever individual have a right to exploit the less clever individuals of his own species? To say that he does is to say with the Fascists that the strong have a right to abuse and exploit the weak - might is right, and the strong and ruthless shall inherit the earth. Richard Ryder

I think few people believe that animals, if they really consider animals at all, live their lives totally automated by instinct. It would not be possible to interact with your environment without some degrees of awareness, intellect and an ability to think, to reason and analyse each situation as it arises and to act accordingly. All animals have some degree of instinct, yes even humans, but in addition there is sentience, conscious awareness, no creature is an automaton.

Often when challenged those in favour of farming and other exploitative practices often justify such by saying that animals have no feelings and that they are not aware, that they lack sentience. Such arguments in light of recent research now stand on extremely shaky ground.

At the present time the webpage Animal Sentience Stories is under construction. This website is a mirror website of Think Differently About Sheep: http://think-differently-about-sheep.com/ (A mirror Website is a replica of an already existing site, used in this case to improve the availability of the original site.)

​Animal Sentience Stories - This section is for true stories and accounts of animal sentience. The idea is to bring together a collection of anecdotes and accounts of animal sentience from the past and the present. At the present time the vast majority of accounts here are taken from books, on-line and other published sources.

​This section includes stories, comments, quotations, videosand other items of interest which focus on a particular a characteristic of animal sentience including the following: